This thread will either get almost no posts or will have more than the PETCO thread within two hours.

No posts, PLEASE!

I nominate this for a Primey in the category of "Most predictably inflammatory thread." Pete Rose ain't got fecal matter on this dog.

I second that, BBWAA.

As for this, I'm sure why this is newsworthy.

Oops ... I'm NOT sure why this is newsworthy.

As much as it is a free country, Selig should probably step in to tell Colangelo that doing this through the baseball team makes baseball involved. I don't think baseball wants to be involved in such a controversial issue.

"None of us are here to force our views on anyone but rather to help in the educational process and let people make up their own minds," Sanderson said.

The organization, The American Life League (www.all.org), has this motto: 'Pro-Life - without exception, without compromise, without apology.'

Educational.. right. What a load of crap. This is 1,000,000,000 times worse than enduring a Sting or Bono interview on their political activities.

What I don't get--saying this as both a Christian and a pro-life supporter--is why Colangelo's faith background is at all relevant in this article. Surely somewhere on this planet there must be someone who has no belief in a higher power, but who also believes that abortion is flat out wrong. Right?

Surely somewhere on this planet there must be someone who has no belief in a higher power, but who also believes that abortion is flat out wrong. Right?

I'm sure there's SOMEONE but why how likely is someone who doesn't believe in god or spirit to be against abortion at all stages and in all cases?

I'm sorry too. These non-baseball thread are getting tiresome.

Has anyone read about what other baseball people are involved with this group?

Here's the list, courtesy of the Battin' 1000 website. Not surprisingly, Chad Curtis and Brett Butler are on it. Also not suprisingly, the famous John Birchers like Dravecky and Knepper are listed too. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the group is almost 100% white players.

Anyway, I'd never heard of this ALL organization before, but they appear to be even closer to the lunatic fringe than most pro-life organizations. At their website you can find out all about the evils of The Pill and the many dangers of using condoms. "Education," indeed.

Kyle Abbott / Philadelphia

Hmm... how ironic that Tommy Lasorda, whose son died of AIDS, is raising money for an organization whose goal is to eliminate condom use.

Are you the biggest idiot ever?

The Wonder Dog's in on this? Sign me up.

I didn't say pro-lifers were the lunatic fringe. Many, perhaps most, pro-lifers do support abortion in cases of rape and incest, and I would imagine most of them are unopposed to condoms and The Pill. What is there, maybe one percent of the population who share the ALL's beliefs? Perhaps less than that. Much of my family is devoutly Catholic, and even I don't know anybody who shares those beliefs. They are definitely on the fringes of society; that's beyond question. Adding the word lunatic to it was simply editorializing on my part.

I think Eric's political opinions are closer to the fringe than pro-lifers.

Guilty as charged. And I don't make any apologies for it.

One name I was surprised to see off the list was Jerry Spradlin. He had acquired a reputation as an outspoken individual with strong religious views. Maybe he just hasn't heard about it yet?

I'm inherently suspicious of the rightness of their cause, if for no other reason than that Joe Morgan supports it.

A fine sentiment, Vlad, but if you look closely, that's the wrong Joe Morgan.

Vlad, it's fake Joe Morgan, not real Joe Morgan.

I think that when the article referred to Scott Sanderson as being the most notable player supporting the cause, it was more likely that Sanderson was the most notable player present at the press conference. Poor editing and reporting in this case.

Robert Plant,

Don't get me started on Kissinger...

For your own well-being, shouldn't you be a tree-hugger too?

Is that what you call what happened to him in '75? :-)

EricEnders is not "definitely immoral" anymore?

Sure I am. I just get tired of typing it sometimes.

I was saddened to see Hudler on that list.

I suspect that the charged emotions existing on all sides of the abortion debate and the generally acrid tone of recent discussions on this site make posting an article here dealing directly with the issue extremely unwise!

Blaming Clinton is getting a very old, 911 is getting old, so Greenspan is the only alternative left.

With all due respect Ross, I wish you were just a little less flippant with your "I'm tired of 9/11" viewpoint. I've seen a couple of your posts where you have taken a "it didn't affect me, so let's move on" attitude. There are some of us here who knew people who died on that day, so I would hope that you would remember that in the future.

This is truly weird - baseball people on the side of the "right-to- lifers". First of all, they're men, so what's their part in this?

This is truly weird - baseball people on the side of the "right-to- lifers". First of all, they're men, so what's their part in this?

Everybody who is on this site that has never played professional baseball can now permanetly shut up. Sir John has stated that we can not have an opinion on baseball because we have nothing to do with it.

Give me a break. That's not what he said and you know it. He didn't say that these guys weren't entitled to their opinion on abortion. He was saying that the decision about what a woman does shouldn't be left up to men. That doesn't mean that they can't have an opinion. I have an opinion on what MLB should do about the DH. I have an opinion on who should be the next governor of California. That doesn't mean I should have a vote in those matters.

Furthermore, I feel men shouldn't have any say about women that murder women, though they are certainly entitled to their opinion.

Yes, that's exactly what I said, because the two situations are completely 100% analogous.

I don't know how one gets the authority to put up links on Clutch Hits, or what the policy is, but thanks, Jim, for putting up the link to this article. Even though the discussion thread wound up the way it did, I'm happy to have had the article brought to my attention.

Believing abortion is murder is reasonable.

Believing men and women shouldn't use birth control is nuts.

Even if you conclude a fetus is human, can society require a woman to provide the kind of personal support for it demanded by pregnancy?

So now it's a personal finance issue? Jane Doe hasn't built up her 401(k) plan very high, and it would be a TERRIBLE inconvience to have to buy all those Pampers.

Society has and will continue to justly enforce proper consequences to certain actions.

You know, it's this kind of flippancy about human life that have so many people so angry at G-Dub.

In this particular case I was referring to the use of 911 as an excuse for why the economy is in bad shape. Invoking people's deaths as a response to that is offensive. Since 911 well over 40,000 people died in auto accidents, lots died of lung cancer ... there is a long list. All of those pople were just as loved and just as important as the ones killed on 911. Some of their deaths were just as sudden and just as pointless. The only difference is they aren't constantly invoked to create sympathy and score political points as you did here.

Hey jackass, I didn't say anything political in my post. I didn't say a damn thing about Bush or Iraq or Bin Laden or anything else you thought I said.

For the record, I knew one of the copilots of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. All I'm asking is a little more sensitivity, that's all. I guess I'm speaking to the wrong person.

Actually, the personal support he was talking about was allowing the fetus to live in my body for 9 months, with all the discomfort that ensues from that.

I don't see how this would change my argument. Discomfort in your wallet, discomfort in your lower back, discomfort in your living quarters, all the same.

But I'm sure that whole D&C process doesn't really discomfort little Junior...

Sorry, you're right. I read more into your post than I should have.

Apology accepted.

Speaking of PETA...

1. Dolf: Nat Hentoff is the most promiment pro-lifer I can think of whose objection isn't religiously based. He may believe in God; I'm not sure. But he's not a member of the religious right; he's a strong feminist who simply thinks abortion is murder.

2. No, RossCW, there are many other differences, including the fact that the 9/11 victims died at once, not individually, and (most importantly) the 9/11 victims were murdered. The way people die does matter, to most people if not to you.

(I promise not to get into any other of RossCW's stuff on this thread; I'll leave pointing out his mistaken economic statements for the Petco thread, where it belongs.)

3. From the All Website: "Chairman (Sal Bando)." If he's as effective at this as he was at GMing the Brewers, every woman in America will soon be having free abortions once a year from now on.

"None of us are here to force our views on anyone but rather to help in the educational process and let people make up their own minds," he [Sanderson] said.

I love this quote.

Scared Pregnant Girl: "Mom and Dad, I really have some questions aboyt whether I should have this baby."

Dad: "Honey, we love you, and we've arranged for you to talk to some people about your decision"

Girl: "Is the church sending someone over?"

Mom: "Even better. Former Royals catcher Ed Hearn is coming over. He may be bringing some friends, like former gold glover Doug Flynn, and former Dodger and Brewer Greg Brock. They'll be here at the behest of former All-Star catcher and Brewer GM Sal Bando to discuss the issues with you, without forcing you to make a selection. If you feel like it would help, we could also ask underappreciated slugger Ken Phelps and former Red Sox manager Joe Morgan to come."

Girl: "The Joe Morgan??"

Mom: "Not the Hall of Famer, but the respected manager who unexpectedly led the Boston Red Sox to the playoffs following the firing of John McNamara. But if it would help, we could ask famous Joe Morgan's teammate, Tom Hume, to come as well."

Girl: "I feel better already".

Hey, if you want to make fun of me, do it on the thread about me.

Everybody who is on this site that has never played professional baseball can now permanetly shut up. Sir John has stated that we can not have an opinion on baseball because we have nothing to do with it.

Give me a break. That's not what he said and you know it. He didn't say that these guys weren't entitled to their opinion on abortion. He was saying that the decision about what a woman does shouldn't be left up to men. That doesn't mean that they can't have an opinion. I have an opinion on what MLB should do about the DH. I have an opinion on who should be the next governor of California. That doesn't mean I should have a vote in those matters.

Shredder,

I noticed you didn't comment on the second part of my post.ad. What if the fetus IS a human being? Do I not have the right to tell a woman to not kill it? As a member of the human race I do have the right to tell someone not to murder. I may have judged Sir John too harshly but I have been told to many times that a womans body is her own. She's right but I for one am one of those people who believe that a fetus is a human being. Please no Dukakis questions, that's cheap grandstanding and the fact is I have not gone through it and I don't know my answer.

BTW My aunt died in an illeagal abortion and my mother had me at 16. My life growing up was one of poverty and unhappiness. My whole life I believed in a woman's right to choose, but when I answered the question below, I had to change my mind.

Frankly, I feel the abortion debate is one simple question. Is the fetus a human being or not?

Make your mind up on that point. If the answer is yes, then any other questions are then simply a question of what degree of morality you may have.

If the answer is no, then the woman has every right to do whatever she wants.

And if the answer is "I don't know"? I'm just being difficult, here, because I think you're essentially right, but that you haven't made the debate any simpler or easier.

And I think that is the biggest problem with the question. We don't know the answer. Some people including myself feel very strongly that we really do know. But we really don't know. And because we don't know, do we really need to terminate so many pregancies when they may be murder?

One, uh, obvious difference between men and women is that women get pregnant and give birth to babies, and men don't. Ever.

Ever?

Can we agree that almost all pontification by any celebrity is worth diddley squat?

Why is it that I don't like having a communication with a poster called Huh??

So.. forget it.

I noticed you didn't comment on the second part of my post.ad.

That's because I wasn't trying to comment on the second part of your post. My beliefs in this area are pretty solid, and nobody here is going to change that. The point of my post to point out the way you completely misinterpreted what Sir John wrote. If he believes that abortion is not murder, but rather a choice for a woman to make about her body, then that doesn't mean that men can't have opinions on the subject. It's just easier for you to make your point if you tell yourself he believes that. That's crap, and I was just pointing it out.

I am genuinely sorry to hear about your aunt.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am dying to hear a Libertarian's thoughts on the abortion debate, and find out what his opponents' think too. So far I am very disappointed in this thread.

Well, nuts. If only someone here had warned me of the trap...

"Even if you conclude a fetus is human, can society require a woman to provide the kind of personal support for it demanded by pregnancy?

Society doesn't require it - nature does. Check out the Discovery Channel sometime. "

Actually, nature sometimes "requires" abortion as a well as infanticide. It all depends on the resources availiable to the parent. If resources are low, the parent literally can't afford the cost of childbirth or lactation; hence, abortion and infanticide.

Humans have always -- ALWAYS -- practiced this in one way or another. It's a cost-benefit calculation; quite absent of moral dilemmas. The Chinese, historically culturally insular, MUST be abortionists and rigorous family planners (birth control has alleviated at least SOME of the need to resort to infanticide) or they'd experience a population crunch that would cause massive starvation -- it's more economical for them to rigorously employ "family planning".

But upper-european and the whole of american cultures have always had plenty of resources, at least for the last 2000 or so years. What population pressures did pop up were dealt with via emigration, witch hunts (killing fertile women in mass is the "best" population control ever), and wars of conquest. Still, in europe, there is a long abortion tradition among the poor and rural, which is why modern abortion services are rather better tolerated there than here. But in America especially, one was encouraged to crap out as many kids as possible -- they were free labor (or money-making near-slave labor in early factories), land was cheap, 3rd 4th and 5th sons could always move further west. Thus abortion was less culturally necessary, and religions enforced this fact.

In modern America, however, there is a vast underclass who cannot afford to have that many children. Children are more expensive to raise, nowadays. Only the slightly wealthy to wealthy can as a whole afford to breed incontinently. But we are still stuck with religious mechanisms which encourage incontinent breeding and discourage abortion (though its general misogyny, another population lever, lives strong in some groups but has declined as a whole).

The Green Revolution has staved off catastrophe thus far but as soon as GM foods or crop chemicals lose effectiveness and food becomes more scarce and expensive, the Catholic Church has ensured a disaster in Latin America. For the sake of humanity, the next pope better be liberal in this regard. As for the right-to-lifers, they are culturally obsolete and so are bound to eventually lose as all reactionaries must.

Can anyone imagine the no-abortion taboo invading China, as Henry Luce and Pearl Buck wished so fervently? The human disaster of no population controls would make Mao's cultural revolutions seems as benign as the Captain Kangaroo show. When such population control levers as abortion are banned (and the Chinese abet this control with heavy misogyny as well), the cultural choices left, aside massive starvation, are war and/or slaughter of adult fertile women. But Christians would wish this, you know, for the sake of saving "souls".

All this is basic cultural materialist anthropology. I'm no expert; just a dilettente and former student; but the principles are fairly sound, I think.

FOTF, you're the greatest poster in the history of Primer.

The real fun begins when that fraud Nieporent googles a bit before chiming in using a casually condescending tone of expertise. Can't wait. All things can be reduced to good and evil, of course.

Lurking Historian --

I do need to reword one thing - when I mentioned european and american societies as having plenty of resources or other population levers at hand, aside abortion, I did not mean to include pre-european american cultures. Those, of course, had generally plenty of resources, and the only real levers needed against overpopulation were the scattered tribal wars. An exception are the mesoamericans, who relied on cannibalism, both as a popultaion control and as a substitution for a dearth of protien in their diets (there were no ruminants aside the odd deer, in Mexico; the only native source of meat was the turkey, which couldnt be domesticated in an economical way).

Now, the witch hunts as a cultural lever against overpopulation. Actually, the mechanism came long before witches were "everywhere": whole sects of heretics were slaughtered and burned (tortured, too). Of course religious insanity caused this but a cultural mechanism insured its growth and, well, relevance as a control factor. The fact that the Catholics lost interest in burning the whole of heretics only to move on to burning witches has something to do with the reformation, yes, but it also has to do with population control : which is why witches were only women.

--BTW, in making this argument, don't mistake me for ignoring other factors which are more immediate but less important, IMO. I have always believed that there is no SINGLE reason for ANY event; I'm not reducing this by isolation.--

"The claims that the witch craze focused on fertile women and that they were killed "in mass" would need further justification."

Alright, I looked in Harris's book for his justification : Harris cites Middlefort's study of witchburnings in southwest Germany showing that 82 percent of the executed were female. After the panic phase, more children of both sexes, men, and the upper middle class were included. But at first, always women.

The first witches to be accosted were invariably old single women (not much population control there, admittedly, but then they were few anyway) and young midwives and nursemaids, from the lower classes (not to be lost in this is the fact that witch hunts were also a class war), which is population control, in spades.

"The connection between witch hunts and population pressures is problematic at best, because the peak of the witch hunts (late 15th-17th centuries) was in a period in which the population in Europe and the American colonies was already relatively low, thanks to the Black Death among other things."

The Black Plague hit in waves; and after each wave the population bounced back at quite a nice level.

"One could argue that Europe only outpaced the rest of the world economically in the 18th or 19th century, and in fact lagged behind places like China for much of the last 2000 years. Thus the tradition of opposing abortion does not come from a situation in which resources were abundant."

Resources dont have to be abundant if there are other mechanisms to relieve over-population. Spikes of Black Plague did this, yes, but there were also never-ending religious wars, emigration, and various forms of mass execution of select populations to render abortion a less depended-upon population control.

China didnt have it so lucky. For one, they hadn't the geography hospitible for emigration or colonisation : they are isolated. Not surprisingly, Chinese culture is self-isolating and rather xenophobic. Aside the odd Mongol conquerer or bungled half-assed invasions of Japan, China was culturally isolationist. So they had to deal with overpopulation in a different way: abortion and infanticide, which was considered no big deal. Since womens' population is directly correlative to the long term population prospects of the whole society, girl children were culled; females were not so much less-prized as, in the long-term, more costly. Had Europe not been so geographically fortunate, it too would have developed an abortion culture; but instead it had a relatively empty continent to colonise, and various other means of popultion maintenance (imperialism, religious war, etc). Now, as Alexander said while weeping in the Indus, "there are no new worlds to conquer", and so relatively full America is increasingly finding itself in a Chinese predicament, with abortion and excellent birth conrtol becoming societal necessities. Europe has proven to be more adaptable, but our religious mechanisms cling tenaciously to obsolete taboos, and even react. Most alarmingly, the religious mechanisms try to spread to other cultures, which is why they are, in aggregate, a wholesale killing machine.

------

If anyone's interested in this stuff, I suggest a couple books by the late great Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, and Cannibals and Kings. My first major was anthropology but I didnt stay with it long and rather ignored cultural materialism anyway. But then my ex forced me to read Harris; and I'm glad she did. Harris's explanations of dietary religious taboos are ingeniusly simple and dead-on, for instance. As far as history goes, it doesn't explain EVERYTHING anymore than does marxism, say, or Henry Adams, but it can explain a lot.

I just remembered another population control that Western culture frowns upon : extended lactation. People in the third world use this all the time. Ancient people used this often.

But in America, it's shameful to breastfeed in public, not to mention shameful to breastfeed for an extended period of time -- no one wants to be called a tittybaby. In fact, just from anecdotal evidence and personal observation, I'd say that western Culture is beginning to frown on ALL breast-feeding.

Sorry, but until there is a perfect means of birth control, something has to give. No one wants wars, (well, SOME do, but then they preach an obsolete religion as well), we dont want mass executions, we dont want extended breast-feeding, evidently, and we dont have anywhere else to emigrate or any more indigenous tribes to exploit. You're left with abortion, which is better than infanticide, is it not?

"To borrow a phrase, "are you the biggest idiot ever?""

"I have never sen so much breasfeeding in public as I do now. It's everywhere; books, magazines, newspapers...you can't swing a dead cat in a restaurant nowadays without hitting a nursing mother."

Alright, jackass, what you describe is a reaction by a small minority of women, which is sensible and, thank god, growing a bit (at least in visibility; probably not in actual numbers). But in a macro sense this doesn't affect my argument at all. You'll also recall several famous cases of malls and other public places forbidding breast feeding. In many if not most social circles it's considered bad taste to publicly breastfeed. If you think that western culture is as open about it as any other culture then you, sir, are the idiot.

Just a few generations ago, there was no alternative to breast feeding; now, however, we have all kinds of soy formula that middle class and poor moms grab up. There is a societal pressure, with so many working women, to decrease the length of lactation. The result is that women beomes fertile again sooner than those did in the past, or that those do now in other cultures.

"To be fair, I suppose I should ask you to define "extended period of time." My wife nursed our firstborn until 19 months, at which time he weaned himself. Our 9 month old daughter is still going strong, and we have friends who are still nursing three+ year olds. "

The "to be fair is better". Don't be a jackass; it just makes you look like Nieporent. Be civil to me and I'll respond in kind.

Well, most women I know that are my age or thereabouts jettisoned breastfeeding altogether. In other cultures, and in the ancient world kids aren't and weren't weaned until five or so. Hell, I think there was someone in the bible who wasn't weaned until age eight. I think your wife and my friends represent the general extremes, with your friends being the ultimate outliers. Someone ought to google the average weaned-from-only-breastfeeding age data; I'm sure it's out there. Maybe Nieporent can; and then present it as if he'd known it all along.

At any rate, the simplest point is that Western women do not breastfeed as often or as long as do women in other cultures and therefore are on average more fertile and therefore one less control over population is lost or at the least stultified.

Nierpoint -- The mere popularity of baby formula make my macro argument for me; the anecdotal remarks are just to counter his, not REFUTE his. I think both our anecdotal citings are equally valid.

"I think it's great to hear about baseball players with any sort of opinion. Can you imagine a group of baseball players forming a pro-choice group, though? I think baseball is so inherently conservative (in both the big "C" political sense and the more traditional) that there would be a whole lot more resistance."

What's funny to me is that I was once in a Socialist group (surprise!) and many were BIG baseball fans.

Baseball seems to be to be far and away the most popular sport among "lefties". Maybe it's the traditional Americanness of it that makes us think our country IS inherently good despite all the flaws seen today...

That's me, anyway.

Are you the biggest idiot ever?

"I have never sen so much breasfeeding in public as I do now. It's everywhere; books, magazines, newspapers...you can't swing a dead cat in a restaurant nowadays without hitting a nursing mother."

I don't know why, but the above sentence is making me crack up. Just the image of breast-feeding women dodging swinging cats while people try to eat. What kinda resteraunt is this? I need more sleep.

BTW, to the scrorer, what made the Petco thread so nutso was that it kept going and going and going and going and going - its never had a single HUGE day, but it never stopped. In baseball terms its peak value was Don Sutton's, but its career was like Cy Young's. So I dunno how valuable a 36 hour report is.

Not that I want to encourage another Petco to breakout . . .

What's funny to me is that I was once in a Socialist group (surprise!) and many were BIG baseball fans.

Hey, I remember you!

The only logical pro-abortion stance is one that allows parents to "abort" their child after it is born, up to the point in time where the child can demonstrate its rationality.

Hmmm.... how about the idea that birth is when it actually becomes a separate, independent living being?

Developmental and soul arguments don't mean much to me anyway, and I don't know what rationality has to do with anything. It's survival independent of another organism that matters to me.

Are you the biggest idiot ever?

This wouldn't be an issue if there was a population cap--or a copulation cap for that matter.

First of all, the seperate, independent living being argument is a viability argument.

No, it really isn't, and that's why question's post is irrelevant to my position.

It's about living independent of anything else, not attached, not depending on the functions and vitality of another living thing. Yes, they still need care after being born, but it is completely different from being biologically integrated with someone.

You care about the survival of "another organism?" What about plants, or better insects or mice or dogs or monkeys?

Well, yeah, I guess I do, but I said I care about survival independent of another organism, though survival was the wrong word, and "living" works much better.

I am pretty sure most humans think there is something that distinguishes themselves from apes, other than simple intelligence.

Yes, many of us are also less hairy. For the record, I don't see where rationality distinguishes humans any more than flying distinguishes birds, but I really don't want to get into that as I don't think rationality plays a part in this discussion (ha ha). It certainly doesn't with my viewpoint (again, ha ha).

If a woman's pet cat decides to climb up into her womb and attach itself to her, getting nourishment from the food she eats, I support her right to terminate its life. If she just has to change the litter box and fill its bowl with Fancy Feast, I don't support her right to terminate its life. To me, this seems like a big distinction.

"If you want to argue that modern (post-1700) European and American societies have had less population pressure than others, "

That's exactly what I'm arguing. But now there IS beginning to be some population pressure, as well as socio-economic general pressures which make incontinent breeding obsolete or even dangerous. So, the old taboos that encouraged people to breed breed breed need to step aside, specificly the anti-abortionists and anti-birth control people.

"The trouble with the witch hunts as a response (conscious or not) to population pressure is that one would then expect it to occur when there was actually a population crunch, as there was at the turn of the fourteenth century. "

True. FWIW, Harris doesn't argue that it was a population control; his emphases are on class issues and the interesting effects of henbane on "witches". His emphases are no doubt correct. But ANY time fertile women are killed selectively, there is a population correction whether by design or not. It may have been a belated reactionary lever, but -- and I can't find the total execution data that I know I have somewhere; I think it's in Sagan's The Demon-haunted World, but I can't find it -- it's a lever nonetheless. If it were 300,000-500,000 women over a couple of centuries, that is staggering considering the popultion at the time. As you no doubt know, the mass of men are biologically superfluous; women and but very few men determine future population rates.

Too late to make a difference? Well, yes, you're right if that were all there was to it; but it's not. The initial reaction to population pressure came with the mass slaughter of the heretics, the great mass of whom were poor, young and fertile (just not, yet, exclusively women). The later witch trials focused nearly exclusively on women (85 percent). You're right this was much too much, and a bit too late to the point of importunity, but then these things aren't perfect. If they were perfect, there would be seamless populations stasis within all societies. There never is. But nature and culture, well, TRY (especially if reactionaries are stopped in time, and people are conscious of macro-factors).

"The same would go for other cultural levers - are these really meant to keep down population, when childhood diseases did a pretty effective job of this anyway?"

If this were true then abortion would have never been practiced, nor would have infanticide. Indeed, no levers like emigration, war, and extended lactation -- none of it would have happened except by the odd chance occurence. Of course now that western medicine and sanitary measures have pretty much alleviated those deadly childhood diseases, we can pretty much guarantee over-population, which in turn is exactly why we must NOT; and demand recourse to birth control and abortion.

Tsk, kamatoa. I would like to be "Evil Clown", but I fear I dabble with "Filibuster" at times. I'm not the character you suggest, however, because if you'll look at the PETCO thread, where I have been proven wrong, I accept it (by Mark Field).

OTOH, and concerning your misappropriated factiod, we will have to discuss a few certainties, assuming that you aren't allergic biological truisms. So this naturally excludes mention of "souls", Jesus Christ, the Trinity, The Easter Bunny, or any other cultural constructs/fairy tales anti-abortionists may cook up.

FACT : Extending lactation reduces fertility. Women aren't as likely to concieve when they are nursing. Jesus and morality of any sort can't change this. All things being equal, a mother using extended lactation will have fewer children than those who don't nurse or truncate the period of nursing.

FACT : Female fertility, even the onset of puberty, is correlated to body fat percentage. Ergo, the better-fed the female is, the more children her body will allow her to have. Of course after a certain point of obesity, this changes, but nonetheless western women have calorie-rich diets which make them more fertile than women in other and ancient cultures. All things being equal, a woman on a western diet will have more children than a woman who's not.

I admit I should have put "all things being equal" on the lactation quote you snipped, but I thought it was understood. I thought wrong. Happy?

So western women DONT have as many children, despite not using old mechanisms to decrease fertility and extend the time period between births. This is all your factiod states. The reason why, of course, is because of birth control and abortion, which, if you'll recall, many people would like to see discontinued. Since we have dispensed with all other cultural levers controlling birthrate, and we have (something I neglected to say) a huge and ever-growing percentage of old people, what few levers we have to contain birthrates must be retained. Until birth-control is perfected, you're stuck with abortion. This culture simply wont support -- except for the very rich -- incontinent breeding like it used to.

The Bible commands to become many and fill the earth; and it enforces powerful taboos which ensure just that. But the earth is pretty much full, so the biblical "advice", which is bronze age anyway, is obsolete. It suited early Americans on an empty continent, and europeans who always had a land to colonise or a crusade to fight, but those days are over too.

My conscience is clear.

I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that I did not write post #305. It made me chuckle, though. No offense, Chris.

Fascinating give and take here.

All among men.

All this is interesting, but what seems to be completely left out is the utter impossibility of reverting to the pre-Roe state of law. Even if by some chance Bush slipped another RTLer onto the Supreme Court (doubtful; he or she'd be filibustered to death), and the court reversed Roe, within a year or two there wouldn't be a dozen states left which outlawed first term abortions. For the simple reason that the RTL position at this level (first term) has nearly no public support whatever, and the politicians know it.

I'd really love to see the first prosecutor outside the Cracker and / or Bible Belt who'd actually try to arrest a woman for having an abortion. This would be the second running of the Scopes trial, with about the same long term result. These folks should take their concern about fetuses and try to help some babies who've made it out of the womb alive. There are many RTLers who do this already, of course---some of my best friends are among them, and they are certainly not all pious fools and hypocrites. But when you read about these so-called RTLers who cry over fetuses while opposing AIDS education (other than "Don't Do It") and family planning (other than "Don't Do It"), it's a little hard to take them seriously.

RossCW....

I think that the reason that most pro-choice people don't vote with the same single-mindedness as the RTLers is simple: The law is on their side, and they're relatively complacent. Whereas the RTLers, in addition to having a more messianic view of the issue, are also fighting to change the status quo, and that's usually what generates the most intensity.

But every poll shows that first term RTLers are a distinct minority of the population. And if for whatever reason the Supreme Court were to reverse Roe, I think there'd be hell to pay for any non-Bible Belt or hard-core Catholic politician who didn't fight to restore the right of first term abortion.

And even Catholics, I should add, are just as pro-choice as the general population. This country's attitude towards government interference in private affairs has come to the point now where just about anything goes, and the right to legal abortion is just one more beneficiary of that overall social trend. You can rail against the vulgarization of public life which this attidude has brought about in its wake (and I often do myself), but you can bet the bleeping farm that it isn't going to change. How many people watch Prime Time Sleaze, how many people go to church, and of those who do go to church, how many of them are even against Roe? The RTL movement has a serious and noteworthy view of the whole question of life, but their audience is shrinking with each passing day.

Or you can look at in another way: There are really only four basic types of best-selling advice books: How to Get Skinny; How to Get Rich; How to Get Laid; and How to Find Jesus. A hundred years ago the last category dominated; today it's the first three. Good luck to anyone who thinks they can change this.

Most people who are pro-choice don't necessarily vote entirely on that basis, a lot of people who are pro-life do.

That's because most of the former know that, despite the hysteria of the abortion groups, abortion isn't in danger. Particularly for elections that have no say on judges, like House races or state government races. None of those people have any say on the essential legality of abortion. They can tinker at the margins -- parental consent, etc. -- but most people don't mind such tinkering.

But if it came to the point where abortion was in actual danger, if Roe were actually overturned, then pro-choice voters _would_ vote on that basis. Republicans, from what I've seen, are terrified of this possibility.

Minks:

<i>Italics</i>

makes

Italics

(Here's hoping it works)

BTW, thanks for the compliment earlier. I should stick to that rather than these political discussions (I was so good on the Petco thread, too). (Incidentally, kudos to the Scorer for "PETCOTA"... that was a good one).

Andy:

"Even if by some chance Bush slipped another RTLer onto the Supreme Court (doubtful; he or she'd be filibustered to death), and the court reversed Roe, within a year or two there wouldn't be a dozen states left which outlawed first term abortions."

Uh......wouldn't the supreme court law supercede these? The judicial ruling would make these laws illegal. RTL people would sue, and courts look to the Supreme Court for precedence over anything else. It wouldn't matter if these laws were passed, it would take a constitutional amendment to break the judicial branch's stance. No federal court will go against a recent Supreme Court decision and have it upheld, unless there is a significant chance in the justices of the Supreme Court. That's why you see anti-abortion laws being knocked out of states like Utah with strong RTL populations.

They can just slip on people with unclear positions about abortion too. The next Supreme Court justice will be Latino, because Bush needs minority support, and the Supreme Court is getting better at not being all white men.

Olerud: They can just slip on people with unclear positions about abortion too. The next Supreme Court justice will be Latino, because Bush needs minority support, and the Supreme Court is getting better at not being all white men.

Tom Strong:

Most of these doctrines come from the Catholic church's official position. In the official view of the Catholic Church [from the Pope], sex should ONLY be used for procreation. Birth control takes away from this purpose. That's why they do not support it. Oral and anal sex are sodomy under the strict bible definition. Homosexuality is therefore sodomy. If anyone can procreate with sodomy, please head to your nearest science lab for study. That is why they don't believe in oral, anal, or any other form of sex other than regular sex. If you follow this doctrine, out of marriage sex is legal, as long as the purpose is procreation. This view may not be a common view even among Catholics, but it's the official position of the Catholic church and is well stated. That is why many hard line Christians have beliefs along these lines. It isn't a common thing anymore, but in the past Catholics had bigger families than other religions because the church has ALWAYS been anti-birth control. Ask your Catholic friends how many siblings they have, and compare that to non-Catholic families. Usually, the Catholics have more.

The contraceptive mentality treats sexual intercourse as though it had little natural connection with babies; it thinks of babies as an 'accident' of intercourse, as an unwelcome intrusion into a sexual relationship, as a burden

Well, that is true. Believe me, I think these guys are complete idiots too, but nothing in that sentence is false.

Uh......wouldn't the supreme court law supercede these?

First, the SC doesn't make laws, they interpret them. Second, if a state passed a law (as some have, I think Nebraska recently passed a partial birth law that is unconstitutional in the last year or two), the law is valid until challenged. Obviously, any abortion law is going to be challenged right away. That's how you change the law. Both sides keep appealing until it reaches the SC, who can then overturn their previous decision. During this process, the first court to rule against the law would probably hand down an injunction, which kept abortions legal throughout the process.

To my knowledge, laws against late term abortions are valid. However, you have to have a) an exception for the life of the mother (and rape and incest, I would think, but I'm not sure about that), and b) a judicial bypass for minors (i.e., they can ask a judge instead of their parents). That's just memory from law school, though, so someone can feel free to correct me.

In any case, Nieporent did best Retardo in the PETA All-Star voting, which must steam Retardo no end.

I find it hard to say that Nieporent "bested" Retardo on the PETA thread based solely on the voting cited. That tabulation was based on number of posts, which completely ignores the quality of each post. My thoughts:

Hey, Lurking Historian --

"1. It is hard to point to specific instances when a mass slaughter of heretics occurred. "

The Cathari, yes, (and there should be a caveat here because this is where murder of heretics blends with garden-variety religious wars), the Hussites, the Anabaptists, the Flaggelants (who were also responsible, in turn, for inciting the slaughter of Jews in blame of the Black Plague), The Taborites, The Waldensians. I agree that it was more sustained killing than specific mass slaughters, through the the proto- and full-blown Inquistion, but it's still a slaughter in aggregate.

And it was slaughter of the poor and young, generally; and of both sexes, which is why I didn't include groups like the Templars, post-Molay, who were of course exclusively male. Harris's point is that it was a way to deal with troublemaking poor people. I think it was both class war and population pressure.

"When ecclesiastical officials persecuted heretics, they were persecuting people mainly from the aristocracy and merchant class, who frequently were celibate anyway."

I totally disagree. This may work for the Hussites, but not many other sects. Most of the messianic sects drew from the disaffected poor. I'll research a bit if I can later today if I dont get called in to work.

"Wouldn't a declining birthrate actually exacerbate the problem of a growing percentage of senior citizens and create a top-heavy society?"

Well, obviously not as much as an exploding birthrate would. Of course the huge new crop of babies would eventually grow old, as would their children, and so on. Increasing the birthrate is not a way to "counter" the population of the old.

But we really don't know what the effects of a geriatric society are, since the world has never seen one before. Maybe kamatoa believes that Jesus will rapture all the Good Folks away before we have to deal with it, so we shouldn't worry and just breed like flies meanwhile, but I suspect the world, more sooner than later, will have to get as strict as China in regard to population control. There's only so much earth.

" (A viewpoint that is, coincidentially, backed by a massive amount of scientific research.) "

How is this proof of a massive amount of research?

Here is the list of "authorities"

:"Business has an important stake in shaping family policy, observed Dana Friedman, Ph.D., who heads Corporate Solutions, a New York consulting firm."

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, moral values or individual inclinations are not the main factors that influence African-Americans' decisions to marry, reports M. Belinda Tucker, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA."

" But Linda Waite, Ph.D., a sociologist at the University of Chicago, has marshaled evidence that marriage also has substantial benefits for health and well-being."

"One of the new thinkers is Theodora Ooms, MSW, executive director of the Family Impact Seminar, a Washington-based think tank."

All of this reported in Psychology Today. Please. The pseudoscience of psychology has been a stomping ground of religious wackos trying to "scientifically" prove their biases since, well, Freud.

Tim LaHaye, the evangelical Christian who co-wrote the wildly popular Left Behind series, had a best-seller on Christian sexuality that emphasised its value in marriage."

Oh wow, bet that was a scorcher.

Humbly, here's my rebuttal to that one :

RossCW....

You make a valid point about the difficulty of finding abortion services in many parts of the country, but I have a feeling that if you checked further into it, those parts of the country would be mostly rural, small town, and/ or Bible Belt. This doesn't cause an "uproar" mainly because the practical effect is local, and centered in areas where the RTLers are in the voting majority.

If by some remote chance the Supreme Court really DID "overturn" Roe, meaning that it allowed states to outlaw first term abortions, I think that within a year or two the practical availability of legal first term abortions would be right around where it is today: Nearly impossible in areas which are controlled by RTLers, and relatively easy everywhere else.

Late term abortions are another matter altogether, at least to most Americans. Just as nearly no one other than the strictest absolutist wants to outlaw aborting a pregnancy caused by rape or incest, relatively few people are comfortable with the idea of allowing third term abortions. It's in these two diametrically opposed positions where you find all those "slippery slope" arguments which drive the rest of us slightly mad, since the premise---that if you allow A, then B NECESSARILY follows, or is likely to---is ridiculous. It's like thinking that no one could vote for a Democratic presidential candidate and a Republican gubernatorial candidate in the same election.

There'd be no need for abortion if baseball had a salary cap.

Shredder: As soon as I hit enter I looked at the post and wanted to change "law" to ruling. Those pro-abortion laws would last about a day before they were booted.

Tom Strong: It's not necessarily a Catholic organization, just one that has values close to those of the Catholic church.

Minks: I don't think the question is looked at that way. I believe they could rule the way you believe, but would make all abortions illegal, not give states the right to make them illegal.

Minks my response was not worded well:

I believe that the Supreme Court could rule the way you put forth, but I don't think they would. I think that if the dynamics changed they would rule to make all abortions illegal.

As a side note: When the Supreme Court decided to make abortion legal, it was illegal in every state, wasnt it? If it was by states laws, then those laws would still be on the books unless they were repealed [which I don't think they were, they were just considered useless]. If those laws weren't repealed, if the Supreme Court were to rule for anti-abortion law, wouldn't those laws go back into effect? This is just a question, not a factual postulate.

Pro-lifer (#358)....

Well put, and true beyond a doubt. While I'm pro-choice (on the grounds that in 2003 no RTL laws could ever be realistically enforced, as well as on the general ground that the decision properly belongs with a woman), most of the RTLers I've have discussions with are much more like you than many of us pro-choicers often care to admit.

But the death penalty is another story....and for another thread.

Curtis: I believe that the Supreme Court could rule the way you put forth, but I don't think they would. I think that if the dynamics changed they would rule to make all abortions illegal.

Even if they were inclined to do so, they can't.

As a side note: When the Supreme Court decided to make abortion legal, it was illegal in every state, wasnt it?

No. Something like 16 or 17 states permitted abortion in some or all circumstances. New York and California, two awfully big states, both had extremely liberal laws. And it's not exactly untrue, but sloppy nonetheless, to say that they "made abortion legal." They made laws against early abortion unconstitutional, which has the same effect but isn't exactly the same thing.

If it was by states laws, then those laws would still be on the books unless they were repealed [which I don't think they were, they were just considered useless]. If those laws weren't repealed, if the Supreme Court were to rule for anti-abortion law, wouldn't those laws go back into effect? This is just a question, not a factual postulate.

If the Supreme Court overturned Roe and its progeny (Planned Parenthood, etc.), and those laws were still on the books, then yes, states could enforce them again right away.

An open letter from Sal Bando

The most likely being that the states have to provide equal protection for that a fetus because it is a person protected by the 14th amendment.

Doubt that this is the "most likely" way in which Roe would be reversed. The Supreme Court is a lot more likely--though not likely--to simply say that the constitutional "penumbra" of privacy doesn't extend to the right to choose to have an abortion. Thus, the buck would be passed back to the several states.

For the Court to do as you theorize, it would have to make (or, more accurately, affirm or reverse) a scientific and moral judgment, i.e., whether a fetus is a person. I can't imagine the day you'll see five votes for that--right now, you might have two. I'm not even sure about Clarence Thomas, given his (in general) reluctance to read a lot more into the Civil War Amendments than was originally intended--to go from a really broad penumbra of privacy to a holding that the Constitution says that abortion is illegal is swinging the 14th Amendment pendulum a long damn way.